The Vows He Must Keep

‘What if I told you there was no need for us to get married any more?’ He spoke quietly, his eyes stubbornly refusing to meet hers.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The threat to you has been neutralised.’

‘You should have come straight to tell me. How long were you planning to keep this to yourself?’

‘My private investigator informed me late last night. I waited to confirm the details myself and it’s true.’

He told her of Angelus Fiero’s involvement, about the blackmail and the corrupt politician. He went on laying everything out on the table until his head hurt and she sagged back against the wall, her face filled with disbelief.

‘You said you were coming to see me this morning,’ she said. “Were you planning to call off the wedding?’

‘Yes, of course,’ he said quickly, then caught her sharp wince. ‘I mean...I was going to tell you everything. We both agreed that this marriage was just for your protection, but now...there is no more danger. Does that not change things?’

She nodded once, her lips pressed into a thin line. ‘Of course... It changes everything. I just wish you’d told me before I came here.’

‘Dani, wait.’ He placed his arm on the wall to stop her leaving. ‘I’ve told you who I am... I’ve told you that I’m not the right kind of guy for you. You need to go and find out who you are and what you want without the threat of danger influencing you.’

‘Valerio. I just laid my entire heart on the line.’ She flashed him a deep look of disdain. ‘My feelings for you never depended on you being wrong or right for me. I accepted you for the man you are—not the one you think you should be.’

‘I don’t want to leave things like this.’ He frowned, hating it that he was hurting her but knowing he had to let her go.

‘If you don’t have anything else to say, then I’m going to leave, before anyone sees me in this dress.’

She waited another moment, refusing to look up at him, before disappearing quickly through the doorway and out into the hall beyond.

He let her go, telling himself that it was better this way even as everything in him fought to follow her. As though distance might help, he launched himself into the first speedboat he could find in the yacht’s docking bay, pushing the vessel to its limits, needing to feel the lightness that always came with being on the water.

The lightness didn’t come.

After a while he gave up punishing the boat and cut the engine, bobbing in the open water as he watched the sun rise higher in the sky. He could be selfish, he thought. He could follow her and take all that precious love she’d offered for himself. He could pretend she wouldn’t grow to hate him, even though everything in him knew she would. He wasn’t built for the kind of love she needed.

She would move on from this and start anew...find someone better. As for him... He wasn’t so changed that he would pine over a woman, was he? He cursed aloud, slamming his fist against the wheel. He couldn’t feel any pain, but the awful emptiness in his chest was a different matter entirely.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE AIR IN Rio de Janeiro was warm and heavy as Dani walked out of the airport and into a waiting car. Blissfully, the chauffeur was not eager for conversation, so she had plenty of time to rest her eyes and prepare herself for whatever lay ahead.

Heartbreak was just another inconvenience right now—along with Angelus Fiero, who had refused to stop calling her every day for the past week until she’d reluctantly agreed to book a flight to Rio and hear him out.

It wasn’t that she didn’t feel gratitude for the part the older man had played in bringing justice against those who had been responsible for so much pain and loss. But something about coming back to Brazil felt wrong, somehow.

It was as if she was adrift amongst the old shadows of a life and had no idea how to navigate. The last time she’d set foot in Rio, she’d had her parents and her brother by her side, her family unit intact. Memories of her childhood were just as foggy as the cloudy sky above, which threatened to spill with rain at any moment.

Dani frowned as her car came to a stop outside wrought-iron gates and looked up at the concrete façade of the Avelar family villa for the first time in over two decades. It seemed like a lifetime ago that her ten-year-old self had said goodbye to the palatial mansion just outside the city, as she was torn away from the only home she’d ever known and forced to start over in England.

Was it any wonder that she had clung to her twin amidst all the constant change in their lives over the past two decades?

As she stepped out into the warm afternoon and told the driver to wait, Valerio’s words rang in her ears. ‘You need to figure out who you are and what you really want.’ The trouble was, she had figured it out. She had told him exactly what she wanted and who she wanted.

The memory of Valerio’s eyes before she’d walked away from him seemed like a dream. She shook her head. Had it really been a week since she’d seen him? It seemed as if only hours had passed since St Lucia. Since he’d held her hand as they dived into the depths of the ocean together...since he had looked into her eyes in Monte Carlo after he had kissed her for the first time in front of all those people...since she’d felt the heat and power of his body as he’d turned the tables on her that first night and tied her to her own bed.

Anger fuelled her as she dug through her bag in search of the old brass key. She rubbed roughly at the space in the centre of her chest, refusing to give in to another bout of tears and self-pity. She had done enough of that in the days after she’d returned to London.

She’d left St Lucia a week ago, returning to her tidy white apartment in Kensington and immediately sending a formal letter announcing that she was completely removing herself as an active partner of Velamar. Valerio had not attempted to contact her, but she’d told herself she didn’t care that he was glad she wouldn’t be working alongside him. It was irrelevant, and it wouldn’t change her own course of action in finally taking the plunge and launching her firm. She should have done it years ago.

It stung like a fresh wound, entering what had once been her family home now completely alone. The air was dry and utterly still inside, where white dust sheets covered furniture like old-movie-style ghosts. A shiver ran from the base of her neck down her spine. But she surprised herself with how boldly she stepped over